I absolutely LOVE peanut butter — peanut sauce, PB&J, peanut butter cookies, Peanut Butter Panic ice cream … you get the drift. I’ve been making an Indonesian dish that features a delicious peanut sauce called Gado Gado since I first started really cooking in my early 20s. So, when I saw this delicious soup in the Post Punk Kitchen, it reminded me of Gado Gado and I had to try it.

I knew the veggies in the original recipe wouldn’t fly with my family, so I added my own combination of zucchini, peppers, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower and broccoli. I also added edamame for a little extra protein. Without noodles or rice, this soup/stew is low carb and LOADED with veggies (don’t let that long list scare you). It’s seriously one of the yummiest soups I’ve ever made (and I’ve made A LOT of soups in my life). Plus, it’s the perfect winter warm-up comfort food!

NOTE: If cooking this dish for kids, omit the hot chili and spice it up on your own with Srirachi sauce.

Directions:
1. Saute onions and shallots in peanut or sesame oil for five minutes, or until tender.

2. Add garlic and saute another two minutes, then add ginger and chile and fry for 30 seconds. Add ground cumin, coriander, tumeric and fry for another 30 seconds then add all the other veggies. Stir fry for a few minutes until just tender.

3. Pour diced tomatoes, water or broth into pot. Stir to combined and raise heat to medium high. Bring to a boil for 5 minutes, then reduce heat.

Middle Eastern food is one of my absolute favorite cuisines, so it was important to me to make sure my kids liked it from day one. We make homemade hummus here on a fairly regular basis and use pitas for everything from pizzas to sandwiches. However, this post is focused on several recipes and ideas that you can use to create a full-on Middle Eastern feast!

The basis of this particular feast is chickpeas, of course! I received some sprouted chickpeas, a.k.a. garbanzo beans, from my friend, Cara Ullrich. Cara works at Roots Market, and is a bona fide food guru. She explained to me that sprouted garbanzos contain much more protein and nutrients than your average canned variety, and are also much more flavorful — and she was absolutely right! These beans made some of the tastiest hummus I’ve had to date! NOTE: If you can sprout your own garbanzos, I highly encourage it. However, you can used dried or canned garbanzo beans to make the hummus included in this post.

The next item on the feast menu is falafel. I’m seriously CRAZY about falafel. In fact, I had some leftover from the feast and I ate with some Sriracha sauce for breakfast (but I seriously never eat anything considered “normal” for breakfast).

Unfried falafel patty.

Falafel is a fried ball or patty made from spiced chickpeas and/or fava beans. Wikipedia tells us this is a popular fast food in the Middle East and I so wish this were the case here (although they do serve some great falafel at the Pita King in Waterloo). You can make your own homemade falafel, but this takes time.

Instant falafel -- just add water!

For my personal feast, I opted to use the Fantastic Foods boxed mix, simply because it’s easy and delicious. If you want to make your own falafel from scratch, here’s an excellent recipe from Epicurious.

Now, onto the fun part — the tzatziki sauce! My version of this is probably not technically tzatziki, but I’ve found a combination of flavors and textures that everyone in the family, especially Chris, loves. My sauce is pretty simple — just Fage Greek yogurt, green onions, fresh lemon juice and a little garlic powder. Chris literally ate every bite of the batch I made and practically liked the serving dish!

So, how do we serve all of this stuff? Creatively. I will be blatantly honest right now and say that the kids aren’t big fans of falafel. This is really frustrating to me, since it IS a version of fast food, is brown and fried and very nearly resembles a chicken nugget. So, I tuck these little critters neatly inside a warm pita, add some fresh spinach and slather lots of tzatziki and hummus all over it. The kids can have more hummus, tzatziki and pitas after they try their sandwiches.

As for mom and dad, we make several different types of mini sandwiches out of our pitas — falafel/tzatziki, hummus/chili garlic sauce, falafel/tzatziki/hummus/chili garlic sauce.

Because this post contains so many recipes, I have created individual pages for each and linked to them below. For the falafel, either follow the recipe above or buy the Fantastic Foods mix! Even if you don’t make the feast all at once, I encourage you to try at least one of these recipes and introduce this delicious and nutritious cuisine to your family.

Our friends, falafel and pita, waiting to be slathered in tzatziki and hummus.